Messaging menu flickers and doesn't display messages

[Jono Bacon]

In the current images the messaging menu flickers repeatedly and does not appear missed calls and text messages inside it (and doesn't go blue when a message/call happens).

[Nick Dedekind (nick-dedekind)]

I think the new message is crashing the indicator-messages process over and over.
When a new message comes in, the dbus service continuously goes down and up and the pid of the indicator-messages-service process changes continuously as well.

[Ayrton Santana (ayrton)]

On my maguro, when it happens, unity8 starts to use 100% of cpus.
Then, it increases the phone temperature and the battery goes down faster.

[Daniel Holm (danielholm)]

Yepp. Mine gets Really hot as well. Even my 3800mAh doesnt stand a chance.

[Bill Filler (bfiller)]

indicator-messages does crash. Here is the output from the command line and the core file:

phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ /usr/lib/indicator-messages/indicator-messages-service.orig

(process:8010): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion 'G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
(process:8010): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion 'G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
(process:8010): GLib-GIO-ERROR **: g_menu_item_set_detailed_action: Detailed action name 'phone-app-sms.msg.2013-06-25T13:12:39-0400-2' has invalid format
Trace/breakpoint trap (core dumped)

phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ gdb /usr/lib/indicator-messages/indicator-messages-service.orig core
GNU gdb (GDB) 7.5.91.20130417-cvs-ubuntu
Copyright (C) 2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. Type "show copying"
and "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "arm-linux-gnueabihf".
For bug reporting instructions, please see:
<http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/bugs/>...
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/indicator-messages/indicator-messages-service.orig...(no debugging symbols found)...done.

warning: core file may not match specified executable file.
[New LWP 8010]
[New LWP 8011]
[New LWP 8013]
[New LWP 8012]
[Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
Using host libthread_db library "/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libthread_db.so.1".
Core was generated by `/usr/lib/indicator-messages/indicator-messages-service.orig'.
Program terminated with signal 5, Trace/breakpoint trap.
#0 0x400aeff6 in __libc_do_syscall () from /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libpthread.so.0
(gdb) bt
#0 0x400aeff6 in __libc_do_syscall () from /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libpthread.so.0
#1 0x400ae2ee in raise () from /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libpthread.so.0
#2 0x402fab42 in g_logv () from /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libglib-2.0.so.0
#3 0x402fabfc in g_log () from /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libglib-2.0.so.0
#4 0x402535d6 in g_menu_item_set_detailed_action () from /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libgio-2.0.so.0
#5 0x40253620 in g_menu_item_new () from /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libgio-2.0.so.0
#6 0x0000ff8e in im_phone_menu_add_message ()
#7 0x4008b948 in ffi_call_VFP () from /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libffi.so.6
#8 0x4008be74 in ffi_call () from /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libffi.so.6
#9 0x401228ca in g_cclosure_marshal_generic () from /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libgobject-2.0.so.0
#10 0x401222ca in g_closure_invoke () from /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libgobject-2.0.so.0
#11 0x4012f592 in ?? () from /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libgobject-2.0.so.0
#12 0x4012f592 in ?? () from /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libgobject-2.0.so.0
Backtrace stopped: previous frame identical to this frame (corrupt stack?)
(gdb)

[Robbie Williamson (robbiew)]

Don't know if this is related, but I've experienced the indicator-message crashing on my saucy laptop installation. I've reported the bug here:
 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/indicator-datetime/+bug/1194574
which LP then decided to dupe to another.

[Renato Araujo Oliveira Filho (renatofilho)]

Since the GAction API has changed to parse action names, we can not set actions ID with ':', '(' or ')'. Because of that I have changed the message ID to use a hex representation of the real message id.

More information about the API change can be found: https://developer.gnome.org/gio/2.37/GAction.html#g-action-parse-detailed-name

[Bill Filler (bfiller)]

The service should be fixed regardless to not crash if it gets action names that do have these characters as there may be other clients that still use actions names that worked fine on raring.

[Lars Karlitski (larsu)]

libmessaging-menu will continue to allow arbitrary ids. GAction is just an implementation detail.

That said, the crash started happening because of a change in glib which aborts when an action name contains invalid characters. I already fixed it in trunk (see bug #1180302). I'll port the fix when I merge the two branches (starting that work next week).

Thanks Renato for providing the workaround.

[Lars Karlitski (larsu)]

Now that the desktop and phablet branch are consolidated, this bug is fixed on the phablet as well. I went through some other parts of the code that had the same issue, but didn't lead to a crash yet (see revision 369).